Conventional advice on career advancement focuses too much on power and not enough on status, argues Alison Fragale, author of Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve.
“Status is how much you are respected and regarded by other people,” explains Fragale, a professor of organizational behavior at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. We spoke with Fragale about how status works, including research-backed ways to build status for yourself and others. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity:
What’s the distinction between status and power? And why is it important to focus on status?
If you have control over something that somebody else values—whether that’s information, money, or even authority to give somebody a good performance review—then that’s what researchers would describe as having power over them. Your status, in contrast, exists only in other people’s minds. You are only as respected as other people think that you are. So it’s nothing but a judgment in your audience’s head, but that judgment has real implications for your life satisfaction and your career success.
So that’s the distinction: are you respected and do you control resources? Now that distinction ends up being important in lots of different ways. Take the low status power holder, who has acquired a lot of power because they control resources, but people don’t respect them—for example, DMV or airport security workers. When people have a lot of power but they aren’t respected, they are uniquely mistreated. We don’t like people having control over us if we don’t really respect them. And we let it be known in ways that diminish people’s quality of life.
So if we look at stats related to gender in the workforce as an example, McKinsey has found that for every senior woman promoted to director level or above, two quit. And why did they quit? They reported status-related incivility, where they have their judgment questioned. People leave them out of important meetings. People imply they’re not qualified for their jobs. These subtle digs that people take at you when you’re in a position of control but you don’t have status, people will find these subtle ways to let it be known that they resent your authority.
We have counseled women to chase power, and I don’t fault that because power is also important—to be paid your worth, to be promoted, and represented based on your level of credentials, those things matter for your life satisfaction as well. But if we don’t understand our status and we don’t manage it, we’re setting people up for failed attempts at getting power, and we will leave people stuck the way I think many women feel stuck.
How can individuals cultivate status?
There’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that the world has assigned value in saying some categories get more respect than others off the bat based on ascribed-status characteristics, or things people inherit through birth or circumstances. For example, gender, race, ethnicity, attractiveness, height, accent, religion, etc. The good news is that how you behave and how you show up has a much bigger impact on how people respect you than any of your demographics, provided you show up in a way that helps you build your status.
I chose the title ‘Likeable Badass’ because it references the two dimensions that we value when we decide whether a person is worthy of respect: Are you capable and are you caring? The first is, can you get stuff done, and can you get it done quickly, efficiently, and correctly? The other thing we respect is people who care about people other than themselves. So the way that we take control of managing our status is we look for opportunities to signal ‘I’m capable and I’m caring,’ through information we put out into the world about ourselves and by influencing what other people are saying about you.
Anytime you can use your unique talents or position to help solve someone else’s problem, that is a great way to build your status. For example, an introduction is a status-building act if it’s a mutually beneficial introduction. When I introduce you to somebody that you don’t know, I have something of value that you would not have gotten if not for me. And by making the introduction, I’m using my network for your benefit.
Another example would be what we call dual promotion. If I’m going to send my boss an update email on what we’ve been working on for a project, I might mention that during a meeting with clients, they gave us compliments about how great our service has been. I’d also mention, ‘I think that that client is as happy as they are because Michelle and Melissa on the team have really invested in building that relationship.’ The science shows that the audience sees the person telling the story as both more capable and more caring—capable because they talked about their own accomplishments and caring because they elevated somebody else.
How can managers and organizations help employees build status and ensure it’s equitable?
If you are a senior person and you want to help colleagues or people junior to be able to build their success, the most effective thing that you can do is to step in and be another promoter, or talk them up without them asking you for it.
If I see you doing it and you have status in my eyes, I’m more likely to do it too. So starting with the c-suite, for example, they can always start their meetings by spreading the good word of what other people are doing. That can be taking five minutes at the beginning of the meeting to celebrate a success, asking each person to share a recent win, or going around and complimenting everybody on something great that’s happened that week.
I recommend using existing channels of communication in the organization to set positivity and celebrate things. Do you send a weekly state of the organization update? Is there a newsletter? Do you have a Slack channel? Start with what’s already culturally appropriate as a vehicle to point out the good work that other people are doing and celebrate others in your organization. You don’t have to create a complicated, completely different way to recognize and reward employees.
Order of a copy of Likeable Badass from Bookshop.org or Amazon.
For research-backed advice on building and wielding power—including how to use it to advance fairness and equity at work—read our book briefings on The First, the Few, the Only by Deepa Purushothaman and Power, for All by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro.